Street artist Banksy left several pictures behind in war-torn Ukraine. Shameless thieves are now attacking a work. However, they don't get very far with their prey.
In Ukraine, shortly after it was created, a picture by street artist Banksy was cut out of the wall by criminals. In the Kiev suburb of Hostomel, police officers arrested a group of eight people between the ages of 27 and 60, said the police chief of the Kyiv region, Andriy Nebytov. The picture of a woman in a dressing gown with curlers and a gas mask was confiscated on site. The organizer is a Kiev native born in 1990. A motive was not initially known. The police took action after a call from residents. They had watched the picture being cut out of the thermal insulation.
The Ministry of Culture has since been called in to decide on the further fate of the picture. In November it became known that the mysterious British artist Banksy left several works in the Russian war-affected suburbs of Kyiv and in the Ukrainian capital itself. Banksy published a video on Instagram in which he acknowledged a whole series of works in Ukraine. In the "Make of" Banksy can be seen cutting out stencils and spray-painting - but without showing his face.
The pictures, most of which were sprayed on house walls, had made the rounds on social media and caused enthusiasm in the war-torn country. One motif was the image of the woman. Another: an old man with a long beard who sits in a bathtub in the town of Horenka and scrubs his back with a large brush. The image is sprayed onto the tiled bathroom wall of a house with a huge gap in the facade.
Other images show female gymnasts dancing over the impact hole of a bullet with a waving ribbon or balancing upside down on mountains of rubble. The black outlines of children can be seen on concrete barricades, apparently using a metal anti-tank barrier as a seesaw. The artist spray-painted a rocket launcher onto a rectangular box, the gun of which looks like a penis painted on the wall of a school toilet.
In the ruins of a kindergarten, a young judoka throws an adult fighter - whose physique resembles that of Russian President Vladimir Putin - to the ground. At the end, a lettering is displayed with the words: "In solidarity with the people of Ukraine". Russia invaded Ukraine at the end of February.
